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Child Battery

  A boy was laughing in the backseat as his father drove them along the mountain's winding path upwards. The road was tight between the wall of rock that was the face of the mountain to their left and the cliff to their right which dropped off at a 90 degree angle to the dusty-orange desert valley below. There was another mountain, an almost mirror-image of their own, on the other side of the rather narrow valley they were driving practically parallel with whilst the boy was talking to his mother.

  The young boy, a child really, was looking past both his parents shoulders in the front seat and through the windshield. As his father began to turn the car around a narrow bend, a truck suddenly appeared around a wall of rock, speeding directly at them. The kid's stomach leaped into his chest and his father twisted the steering wheel sharply, the car swerving to the side as the truck blared its horn. The car smashed into and through the guardrail, flying through the air as the boy’s mother screamed.

  As the car flew, time seemed to slow down and both of his parents began making weird chanting noises. Suddenly, with a loud crack, the car began pulsating a translucent blue. Yellow lightning could be seen zipping through the insides of the walls, roof and bottom of the car whenever the car pulsed to blue - through the phantasmic blue engine, petrol tank, axle - before being covered as the car pulsed back to its normal solidarity.

  He screamed and his mother cut off her occult-like chanting twisted around, he could see the fear in her eyes, tears streaking down her face and eyebrows furrowed tightly. She gripped his arm “everything is going to be okay” she cried but he instinctively jerked back in fear when his mother became the same translucent blue as the car. She pulsed back to normal again with the car and stretched her body to wrap her arms around him in a tight hug. He hugged her back but couldn’t help but stare in horror, chest pounding, as his mother pulsated that same translucent blue as the car. With each pulse her features became less defined. The edges of her Silhouette became vague and blurry, facial features blending together. With each pulse the feeling and pressure of their skin touching slowly disappeared until she was gone. Everything - his father, the car - it was all gone and he was left standing in an empty expanse of glaring white.

  He stood there a while, seemingly floating in this vast plane. Not knowing which direction was what, and after much uncertainty, he started forwarded at random.

  Step, step, step.

  As one foot stepped in front of the other, a light blue began to appear through the white above.

  Step, step, step.

  An orangey-brown began to form below, slowly becoming solid and firm. There was a distant cow of a bird which may have been imagined.

  Step, step, step.

  The white slowly dissolved into a blue sky and a vast, barren desert which stretched out before him.

  Step, step, step.

  He trudged forward across the desert.

  Step, step, step.

  One foot in front of the other.

  Lips cracked, throat painfully dry, the sun beat down upon him.

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  One foot in front of the other.

  Weariness became mindless exhaustion as he trudged on.

  One foot in front of the other.

  After a seemingly endless, agonizing amount of time, he looked up and could vaguely see a small car off in the distance.

  After a moment, he slowly raised his heavy arm and waved. He could see a hand wave back. He collapsed, barely feeling his knees hit the ground before landing face first. Darkness and weariness closed in around him. The last things he saw where bullbars approaching and someone waving, waist out the window, before falling unconscious.

  — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

  “So, that was the last thing you remember?” The police officer asked, notebook and pen in hand.

  The kid simply nodded.

  “And then you woke up on the couch in the other room, before being brought in here?” The kid's head twitched slightly to the interrogation rooms single door. He nodded again, mouth a thin, tight line.

  The officer across the metal table made uneasy eye contact with another officer seated to the side of them. He pocketed his notebook whilst they both stood up. “Look, we just have to go confirm a few things. Again you're not in any trouble." The second officer spoke up; “We'll be back shortly, do you want anything?” The kid simply continued to look forward blankly. The officers made eye contact again before leaving the room.

  The room was bare aside from a table and three chairs. A single LED light bathed the plain walls in white, with only one small window near the roof slightly disrupting the blandness of it all with the darkness of night.

  He began to feel a weird pulling in his chest. The light began flickering. He looked up towards the light. He felt a tingling in his fingertips, pins-and-needles like. He looked down, inspecting them.

  The air seemed to almost cackle, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to stand up. He stretched his hands upwards towards the LED.

  Suddenly, a spark of electricity shot from light towards his fingertips, a crackling pain emanated from his fingers as the electricity jumped between them. The air crackled and the pain died down but replacing it he could feel the electricity flowing into his body, through his muscle tissue, veins, bones - it felt as though it were filling his body up like a battery.

  Abruptly, the electricity ceased flowing from the LED. The intense demand upon it had broken the filament, plunging the room in complete darkness. The kid realized he was standing, his body humming with electricity. A part of him new he could hear the muffled sounds of officers yelling at each other but he wasn't paying them any attention. His attention was on the energy, and a strange need he couldn't understand but the need, the hunger pulled at his stomach and his chest towards the window. The need, the all consuming craving, was outside. He placed a chair under the window, climbed up and tried to open it but it was locked. In desperation he banged on it, electricity exploded out of his fist, destroying the glass and scorching the wall and roof. He squeezed his body out through the window as fast as he could, the desperation driving him onward as his scrabbling hands pulled at the grass and dirt which he used to haul himself out.

  The outside was nothing but darkness, aside from the light of a street lamp some hundred meters away. The street lamp beckoned him; the energy inside its bulb, surging through It's cables, urged him forward and he ran towards it, arms outstretched. A stream of electricity shot from the lightbulb to him, filling his body. The sensation grew and grew, his body filled with this electricity. It filled him up and up, more and more, the sensation becoming one of pain. It started in his chest but swiftly grew outward. He screamed as the pain increased, thrashing about in the air. He tried to stop the stream but he couldn't, crying out in agony as the pain grew and grew, the energy filling his body up beyond all capacity. The energy became more and more such that he felt ready to explode.

  And he did.

  The explosion erupted from his chest outwards in a ball of glorious, terrifying energy; tearing up the street, destroying buildings, ripping trees out of the ground, killing everyone in the vicinity.

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